


Cross-Stroke

by Swordfishtrombone84



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Johnlock - Freeform, Kissing, M/M, Mentions of Violence, Mind Palace, Possible non-con elements in a rather strange way, Post-Reichenbach, series 3 spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-04
Updated: 2014-06-04
Packaged: 2018-02-03 11:02:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1742417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Swordfishtrombone84/pseuds/Swordfishtrombone84
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Sherlock sees the real John for the first time in the two years since The Fall, just bursting to tell him about that one beautiful night they shared in his Mind Palace, he notices that John's word cloud is now in cursive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cross-Stroke

He’s changed, in many obvious and subtle ways, but the moustache isn’t the most glaring difference.  What strikes me first – before the ill-judged facial hair, the extra worry lines around the eyes, the three pounds extra weight and the fact he’s taken up cycling – is that his word cloud is now in cursive.

A delicate, flowing font, something like Palace, but with Edwardian ascenders.

It’s lovely.

I haven’t missed John too terribly during my two years away.  This is because I continued, as always, talking to him despite his absence.

The corner of my mind palace devoted to John is quiet and still.  There’s a low fire burning in a small open fireplace (attractive but not ornate, with a vintage brass fireguard), and I’ve positioned his chair four feet away from the fire, at such an angle that the heat won’t scorch his face, but allows me to see his profile from my chair (the same as my own in Baker Street) at its most aesthetically pleasing.

To the left and right of the file are tall oak bookcases in dark-stained wood.  The books on John’s childhood are bound in deep green leather.  I keep his birth certificate tucked between pages 56 and 57 of his Teenage Years, as a bookmark for the moment he first kissed Marjorie Battersby, his secondary school crush.  I like to re-read this part.

Lots of his personal library I’ve researched from legitimate sources and absorbed from conversation (he thinks I don’t listen, and I don’t always, but I do sometimes), though there are blanks I’ve filled in with reason, surmise and, where desperate, imagination.  I came here quite often, after The Fall.  Just to browse the shelves.  To remind myself of small, comforting details about him.  I never thought my favourite subject would become a person.  But during those two years, I found I spent more time in the John Room than even the Tobacco Ash Room.

This is where I would retire to, when my body became too broken and bruised to inhabit without losing my sanity.  When they would whip me, this is where I’d come.

It’s where I came the one night when I told John everything.  The John in my mind palace is as quiet and still as his room.  He responds to my questions and observations with nods and knowing facial expressions.  He glows with encouragement as warm as the fire.

I can’t quite recall what was happening, that particular night, that I felt the need to escape from.  I remember I was cold, and in physical pain, and that there was the very real possibility that it might be the end of everything for me.  I went into the palace as much to say ‘goodbye’ to John as anything.

He was sitting as always in his chair, serene and oblivious to my torment, his kind eyes fixed on me.

I sat down opposite him.  I said,

‘I’m sorry I never told you the truth.  I’m sorry I lied about lying.  As much as I’ve ever allowed myself to love anyone, I love you, John.  Partly against my will and good sense.’  I said lots of other things as well, but those are the only ones essential to the narrative.

I took his hand and led him down the Baker Street staircase, through Lestrade’s office, through my childhood bedroom and into the darkened Planetarium.  I’m quite proud of this room.  It’s the one where we fought The Golum.  I realised after that case that I’d need somewhere to store facts on the Solar System, so I built the framework of the room hastily, in an obvious location, though since then I’ve added an incredible amount of detail.  The walls are black and silver and shimmer like gossamer, and the floor, too, glitters – purple-black marble with tiny shining stars of dust suspended in it.  In the small control room at the top I keep filing cabinets of discs – instructional, interactive astronomical videos that project themselves onto the great dark dome of the ceiling. 

I left John in the domed projection room and put in the disc about Supernovas.

Back down in the domed room, I stood face-to-face with John on the glittering floor and touched his face and his shoulders.  I kissed him very gently on the lips and cheeks, feeling his stubble prickle my skin.  Revelling in the exquisite detail with which I’d constructed him.  As stars died around us, I unbuttoned his shirt and felt his chest and soft stomach, took down his trousers and kissed the tops of his thighs.

When a star dies, for a brief time it outshines an entire galaxy.  I thought this would be a fitting way for me to exit the world, but as it happens, I survived.

So now I stand in the entrance to the restaurant and stare at him.  When I first catch sight of that trailing, delicate cursive cloud, clinging to him in strands like an unravelling spider cocoon, all I want to do is say all of it out loud to him.  Tell him what had happened between us.  Everything I saw and touched and heard of him in the planetarium.  I want to run my hands through the strands of white script that cling to his clothes, let the serifs hook on my thumbs and the hairline strokes tickle my palms, and then scatter the words as I fold him in a hug.

I draw on my moustache with the flair of a calligrapher – two bold cross-strokes, just above the baseline of my lip.

This feels momentous, though it shouldn’t.  After all, I’ve talked to him every day.  He doesn’t know this, but that’s a minor detail.

I approach.

There’s a woman with him I don’t recognise.


End file.
